Whitbread Book Awards

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(Redirected from 2002 Whitbread Book Awards)

The Whitbread Book Awards are among the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards. The awards are named after and funded by Whitbread plc, a leading British leisure company.

The awards, launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. As such they are a more populist literary prize than the Booker Prize. One of the main events in the British literary calendar, they are sometimes announced as if they are the first of the year's literary prizes, whereas they are actually the last.

In 1989, controversy erupted when the judges first awarded the Best Novel prize to Alexander Stuart's The War Zone, then withdrew the prize prior to the ceremony amid acrimony among the judges, ultimately awarding it to Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding.

The 2005 awards are to be the last sponsored by Whitbread. It is unclear whether the competition will be taken over by a new organization.

1 The Process
2 Book of the Year Award Winners
3 Complete Winners and Nominees
4 External links

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The Process

Currently each year winners are chosen by five separate judging panels picking from different shortlists in five different categories

The categories are:

Best novel
Best first novel
Children's
Poetry
Biography

Each category winner receives £5000. One of the category winners is selected as the "Book of the Year" and given a further £25 000. The overall Whitbread book of the year is chosen by a judging panel that comprises five judges from the previous category round and four new ones.

The category winners do not have to be British but must be resident in the UK for at least six months of the year.

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